Many types of manufacturing require that an airtight and/or watertight seal be created between adjacent work pieces, often resulting in the manual application of a sealant, followed by a manual reshaping of the applied sealant to achieve a desired sealant profile.
While seal quality is a concern, in many applications it may be additionally desirable to minimize the amount of sealant used, while still insuring that the resulting sealant profile is smooth enough to minimize turbulence that may occur when a fluid passes over the sealant.
While the application of sealant may have utility in a broad variety of applications, the use of sealant in aerospace manufacturing may be of particularly importance, for example in minimizing added weight, and streamlining the resulting sealant profile.